Put more towards your mortgage: 3 ways to save money on your food bill

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If you have a home loan, you’ll be paying interest. The longer you are paying off your mortgage, the more you pay in interest.

Most of our home loans at Border Bank have the option to make extra payments to reduce your mortgage principal.

Aussie families of four spend around $200 to $300 a week on food on average, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey.

Being one of your greatest expenditures, here are a few ways to save on your food bill so that you can pay your mortgage off sooner:

1. Ditch the takeaway menus

Simply by eating in, and not ordering takeaways, means that you can save $15 to $25 a week. It doesn’t seem like much, but that could mean around $100 a month saved, or $1200 a year. Not only this, but cooking at home also has health benefits – restaurants rely on fat and salt to make their food taste good; you can cut down on these if you were to make it yourself.

2. Plan for success

Simply by scheduling your meals, you can plan exactly what you need to buy on your grocery trips so that you don’t end up making impulse buys, or buy too much.

Another way planning your meals helps is that it gets you to take stock of what you already have – you may discover that rogue bag of rice hiding in the back of the pantry! And remember all it takes is an hour or two on your weekend to plan and prepare your home meals.

3. Junkmail is your friend

When it comes to keeping your food bill low, shopping wisely is your most important tool.

Pay attention to the specials. Those pesky circulars that land in your mail every week need not go to waste, they are a great tool in helping you save money.

As well as this, stock up on staples like rice, wholegrains and nuts when they go on special – they don’t go off easily so can be stored for a while.

Specials are also great for signalling what produce is in season. Buying in season means that you are more likely to be buying local produce and that food is usually priced to sell. As the name suggests, produce doesn’t stay ‘in season’ all year long, so you will naturally be working variety into your meals.

Every extra dollar you save put towards your home loan, helping you to pay it off faster, talk to one of our Home Loan experts today about how you could own your home sooner.